It's always a joy to hear the
scripture read. And this chapter has always been
one of my favorites. Don't you love it? I like that
part where they ask the blind man, who did this and where is
he and how did he do it and all these things. And he just kept
replying, this is what happened. This is what he did. And then
at that one point there where Brad was reading, he said, they
again called the man in verse 24 that was blind and said to
him, give God the praise. We know that this man is a sinner. He answered and said, this man
was so honest. It was a very simple man. He
answered and said, whether he be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas
I was blind, now I see. And so that's why this is such
a... a passage that we so love because
we don't know very much, but we do know that the Lord has
given us a sight of Christ. And so that's what we love about
this passage and about so much of scripture. Now I've entitled
today's message, No Sin or In Sin? The last couple of verses,
Jesus said in verse 41, if you were blind, you should have no
sin. But now you say, we see, therefore
your sin remaineth. So this is teaching obviously
that we by nature are sinners and blind. But the Pharisees
didn't believe they were blind. And because the reason they didn't
believe they were blind is because they thought that they had a
clear enough view of God and the way to eternal life that
they could teach others. So they thought they could see
so well that they were teachers of others when they were actually
completely blind because they did not know, by their own willful
refusal to receive Christ's word and all that he did, they did
not know who Jesus Christ was. They didn't know God, though
they claimed to be God's people, though they claimed God was their
father, Jesus said, you don't know him because you can't hear
him whom he sent. Now, I want to look just a little
bit here at the last part of the chapter before we begin going
through this chapter. He says this, if you were blind,
you should have no sin. Now, immediately, we don't like
to admit when we don't understand something that we ought to understand.
Isn't that the way you tend to approach things I do? If I should
understand something, but I don't, I want to make some kind of a
reason why I don't, or a claim that I do. So there's this human
nature is to defend ourselves and to claim more for ourselves
than is true about us. But the gospel comes to us in
such a way that it finds us without what it requires, what God requires
of it. It finds us lacking. And that's
what this text of scripture is trying to teach us, that what
we need to have, we don't have, but we only get it by God's grace. And in this case, it's blindness. We can't see. We're in the dark. Spiritually, we can't see the
things of God. We can't understand them. We
don't know them. And so, at the end of this text,
at the end of this chapter, the Pharisees, who considered themselves
to be able to see, Jesus said, your sin remains. But to those
who have no strength, who come to Christ like this blind man
who was born blind, I have nothing. I can't see. Until the Lord opens
my eyes, that's the ones who have no sin. Now what an amazing
thing, what a contrast it is between having no sin and being
in our sin. And that's why I've entitled
this message, In Sin, or I'm sorry, No Sin or In Sin. We're either without sin, Or
we are in our sin. There's no middle ground here.
And that's why I wrote what I did in the bulletin today, the article,
No Middle Ground. We either are looking to ourselves
in idolatry to produce what God requires, or we're looking to
Christ alone. There's no middle ground. If
we look to ourselves in part, then we're not looking to Christ
at all. But if we look to Christ entirely,
then the Lord Jesus himself says, you have no sin. Now, how can
that be? Well, remember how in scripture
it says when we see the Lord, As in 1 John chapter 3, when
we see him, we shall be like him. Remember that? Or in Psalm
17, 15, I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. When we see the Lord in glory,
God says that we will then be like him. What God's purpose
is, is to conform his people to the image of his Son, and
that will be complete when we see the Lord Jesus Christ. Now,
we can't see him now with these eyes. But with eyes of faith,
what we do see now is we see the truth about him. And we're
persuaded of it. God has convinced us. He's persuaded
us. That's what faith is. The persuasion
that what God said concerning his son is the truth of our salvation
and life. So even though when we get to
glory we will be like Him when we see Him, what God is saying
to us is that when we see Christ by faith, now we have no sin. We've been given but God has
received us as the Lord Jesus Christ. All that He is, we are
in Him. And so that is why the Lord says
here, He has no sin. Certainly this man was a sinner.
There's none that doeth good. There's none righteous. And in
Ecclesiastes 7, there's not a just man on earth who doeth good and
sinneth not. We know that every man is a sinner.
The Apostle Paul said, O wretched man that I am. And he also said,
I'm the chief of sinners. So we all sin, and to deny that,
according to 1 John 1, is to lie, is to make God out to be
a liar by our claim that we have no sin, because we obviously
are sinners. But this great contrast is seen
here between those who have no sin because they've been given
eyes to see Christ. And so God has shown by that
that they are in Christ and have no sin because God has received
him for them and received them in him and as him. And those
who think they see have their sin because they are not glorifying
God for the only righteousness there is, which is the Lord Jesus
Christ. If we think that by anything
we do we can remove our sin or fulfill God's requirements for
our obedience, then we are completely blind. and our sin remains. But if we see by God-given grace
that everything that God requires has been met only by the Lord
Jesus Christ, and that God has given Him for us to be our Savior,
to save us, then we have sight that God has given, and we have
no sin. All right, now let's begin with
verse 1 of this chapter. It says in verse 1, as Jesus
passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth. This man had never seen. From
birth his eyes did not work. Now, that helps us in verse 20. Let's see, where does he say
that here? In verse 32, the blind man told
the Pharisees, since the world began, was it not heard that
any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind? Now, this
is a statement by the Spirit of God. No one has ever been
able to open the eyes of a man who was born blind. That's what
God is saying. And He's saying here that this
man was blind from birth, never saw. So what is this? This is certainly a great miracle. This is a miracle only the Lord
Jesus Christ has ever performed. And yet we see something even
more profound than the fact that Jesus made a man see who had
never seen since he was born. He had never seen in his entire
life. And the lesson here is that all of us by nature, are
born spiritually blind. And only the Lord Jesus Christ
has ever given spiritual sight to a person born blind. Now, if we understand that, then
the rest of the chapter helps us immensely because we see in
this chapter the miracle of our salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ
is going to open the eyes of those spiritually born blind. We were born dead in sins because
of our sin in Adam. We died in Adam, and when we
were born to our parents, Spiritually, we were born dead, without sight. And God says that we were darkness
itself. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 8 says,
you were darkness. And the whole world lies in darkness. And when God saves us, he translates
us. He moves us from the kingdom
of darkness into the kingdom of his dear son. That's in Colossians
1, verse 13. So it helps us see here that
the whole chapter is not talking merely about Christ healing a
man physically born blind, but about the Lord Jesus Christ who
gives spiritual sight to those who are spiritually born blind,
and only he can do it. Okay, so that's the first thing.
The second thing in this first verse we see is that Jesus passed
by. When he passed by, he saw a man
who was blind from his birth. The man obviously couldn't see
him, but the point is is that when God gives us this spiritual
sight, it's because the Lord Jesus Christ comes to us and
sees our condition, and he himself has compassion on us. Salvation
is by the will of God, and that will comes to us through the
Lord Jesus Christ because of His compassion. And that's what
we see here. At least those two things are
evident from verse one. But notice in verse two, his
disciples asked him. So the disciples see this man
who was born blind. Jesus obviously took notice of
him. And so they asked him, saying, Master, Who did sin, this man
or his parents, that he was born blind? It's natural for us to
think, look at this person in this terrible condition. What
did they do to get into that condition? And so the disciples
ask, did his parents sin before he was born? Or did somehow he
sin even before he was born? That he was born blind? They're
looking for a reason why he was blind. And notice what Jesus
said. He answered in verse 3, neither
hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of
God should be made manifest in him. Now here's a very important,
a very important truth and wonderful truth from scripture, is that
even though our condition as being spiritually blind is entirely
our fault, is because of our sin. Yet there's something that
rises above and transcends the immediate cause of our blindness
to God's purpose. And it was not because of our
sin, ultimately, that we were born this way. There was something
greater, something more significant, something so much more significant
that the Lord Jesus says here, neither has this man sinned nor
his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest
in him. Certainly his parents were sinners,
and certainly he was a sinner. But the reason why he was now,
at this point, born blind, was to teach a greater lesson, which
is this, that God's purpose is always what drives everything,
and the end purpose God had in this man's blindness, and in
our own spiritual blindness, is to glorify His Son. And this is so significant that
it endears us to the Lord with everything. Because what God
is saying here is that even though we have sinned against Him and
sinned against the Lord Jesus Christ, He sees His purpose of
grace and love as the motivation of God Himself, His own purpose,
to do what He's about to do here. In Ephesians 1 and verse 11,
it says, God works everything according to the counsel of His
own will. And that's what He's saying here.
The Lord Jesus Christ is not laying the reason, the purpose
of this man's blindness at his doors because of his sin, but
he lays it in the purpose of God for the glory of God. He's
going to make this man see, and it's going to be to God's glory.
And so this is phenomenal. This is phenomenal. Where else
in scripture has this ever been said? Well, remember when Joseph
was governor over Egypt, and his brothers came to him, and
they had sinned against him. They had thrown him into a pit,
and then sold him into slavery, and he was first the servant
in Potiphar's house, and then he was cast into prison, and
he served in prison. And God exalted him to the throne. And now Joseph is on the throne,
and his brothers come to him for bread. And finally Joseph
is made to weep because he hears the pleading of Judah on behalf
of Benjamin, his youngest brother, whom Joseph loved, and his father,
whom Joseph also loved. And Joseph finally Upon hearing
Judah's plea, he can't restrain himself any further. And he comes
to his brother and he says, I'm Joseph. I'm Joseph, your brother. God brought me here. And they're
afraid and they don't know how to react to him. They know he
has the power of the governor over the whole land. Their lives
are in his hand. And he says, now don't be angry
with yourselves. It was not you who sent me here,
but God to preserve life, to save many. And this comes to
them as such a shock, they can't believe it. And that's what the
Lord is saying here. Our sin is sin, and it is against
God. But His purpose, His eternal
purpose, was to glorify His Son in our salvation. And that's
what we need to see here, is that the glory of Christ and
the glory of God in Him so far transcends our own sin that we
see that even our sin is according to God's purpose to glorify His
Son in our salvation. honor of his name for his grace
and his mercy. It's all to the praise of the
glory of his grace. And so, so this is, this is amazing
to us. It's beyond our ability to believe. The Lord has to give us grace,
doesn't he? Alright, now in verse 2 through 5 here we also see
this. In verse 4 he says, I must work
the works of him that sent me. Now, This is a very important
statement Jesus is saying here. What he is about to do was a
work that his father had given him to perform. And he says,
I must work the works of him that sent me. Everything he did,
he did according to what God had given him to do. In fact,
he is the one God sent. Sent. This is such a significant
word in the book of John, and I can't remember how many times,
but it's around 53 times in the book of the Gospel of John that
Jesus says, his father sent him. And this is one of those, I must
work the works of him that sent me. So the Lord Jesus is a servant,
and he is a faithful servant. He came to serve his father,
but also his people, and the service that he rendered was
to do the work of God, and that work was to save his people from
their sins. So here we see, I must work the
works of him that sent me, he says, while it is day, the night
cometh when no man can work. The day he's talking about here
is that period of time when the Lord Jesus Christ was in the
world doing the will of God. The work that God gave him to
do was all the work that would glorify God and make known God
to his people, and that work is what God gave him to do, and
it was during the time of his life on earth. when they took
him to the cross and they crucified him, that was the night, his
work was done. He couldn't work anymore on earth
at that point to accomplish the will of God, so he had to fulfill
the will of God during his life and in his death. And that's
the day. And so he goes on, he says, the
night cometh when no man can work, because Christ alone could
do the work of God the Father. As long as I am in the world,
I am the light of the world. So you can see now, he's the
light of the world. It's daytime while he's in the
world. And it's the work God gave him to do that he must do
during that daytime. And as long as he's doing that
work in the world, he's the light of the world. And when he's done,
the work of God is finished. He finished the work. And this
is the light. This is the light given to us.
And so he goes on now. In the text he says, When he
had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle,
and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. This
is the work. What did he do? Well, he said
that God, the Father, had sent him to do the work God gave him
to do, which was going to be done starting at verse 6. And when he saw this blind man,
he did this work. After he had spoken these things
that he came to do his father's work, it was daytime, he's the
light of the world, the light of God is going to be seen in
him in the work that he accomplished. So, notice in verse 6, he spits
on the ground and with that spit and the dirt, the dust of the
ground, he made clay. with his hand of the spittle,
and he then took that and he smeared it, he anointed, it says,
the eyes of the blind man with the clay. Nothing in scripture
is accidental. This is written here for a specific
purpose. It's part of the work, isn't
it? And what was the work God gave
him to do here? Well, it was to open the eyes
of this blind man. How would he accomplish that
work? And what would God use in order to open his eyes? Well,
the Lord Jesus would spit on the ground. And he took the spit,
and he mixed it with the dust, and then he applied, he anointed,
it says, the eyes of the blind man with that clay. Now, It's important to see that what
the Lord Jesus did here is showing us a spiritual truth by the physical
actions that he performs and the things that are involved
in that. What Christ did here first was
to spit on the ground. Now, in scripture, spitting has
a significance. It even does today. If, when
I was, one time I was riding along with my son-in-law, who
was a police officer, and this person that was under arrest
spit and tried to spit on me, because I was closest to the
person. And my son-in-law, who was the police officer, told
the person, that is against the law. By spitting on someone,
that's against the law. And so I didn't know that. I
just kind of dodged it. And I was glad that I actually
get hit by that. But even today, people use spitting
as a sign of hatred, scorn and reproach, don't they? We understand
that. And so this is not just what
we think of today. In the book of Numbers, in chapter
12, there was an event. Miriam, the sister of Aaron,
remember she was the one that helped bring, actually the sister
of Moses and Aaron, and she was the one who told the daughter
of Pharaoh about Moses in the basket in the river, that she
could find someone to nurse him. And so she was used by God in
many ways. And in Exodus 15, right after
they passed through the Red Sea, Miriam led Israel in a song.
Well, Miriam and Aaron, the sister and brother of Moses, had seen
Moses marry a woman who was of Ethiopia, and they didn't like
it, and so they were speaking against him, and they both said,
you know, has the Lord only spoken by Moses? He spoke by us too. And so they were speaking against
Moses because he married an Ethiopian woman, and they claimed that
God had also spoken through them. Now the Lord heard this, and
he immediately told the three of them, Miriam, Aaron, and Moses,
come out to the tabernacle. And when they came out there,
the cloud, the Lord appeared in a cloud on them, and he told
them, Moses, he told Aaron and Miriam, he said, Moses, I speak
to him face to face, clearly, without shadows, just clearly. And he expressed his dissatisfaction,
his anger at them for what they said about Moses. And so when
the Lord lifted the cloud up from it, it says that in Exodus
chapter 12, it says that Miriam was completely white with leprosy. So this showed what? That God
had brought upon her this plague because of her disobedience and
her arrogance and her speaking against Moses with her brother
Aaron. And so as soon as the cloud left and Miriam is white
with leprosy, Aaron says to Moses, he didn't talk to the Lord, he
said to Moses, Pray for her, you know. She's like a dead person. And so Moses immediately asked
the Lord to heal her. And the Lord said this to Moses,
if her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed
seven days? Let her be shut out from the
camp seven days, and after that, let her be received again." So,
this is significant. It helps us understand what spitting
is in scripture. The Lord said, if her father
had shown his disgust with her by simply spitting in her face,
she couldn't even be in the camp for at least seven days. And
yet, God brought leprosy on this woman. Of course, she's Miriam. You would think that she had
some clout with God, but no. No, she stood on the basis of
grace alone. And so this attitude of arrogancy,
and the Lord showed her she was nothing, and then Moses prayed,
and the Lord, of course, healed her after seven days. But the
point is, is that spitting signifies reproach and a curse. And then
again, it says also in Deuteronomy 25, there was this law that God
said if two brothers, if one brother is married, and he and
his wife have no children, and then that brother die, then his
brother was supposed to take his wife, who had no children,
and marry her, and the child, the firstborn child between them
would then have the name of his dead brother. And it also says
in Deuteronomy 25, the same place, that if that second brother,
the living brother of the one who had died, if he says, no,
I will not take his widow to be my wife, I will not bear children
with her and name them to my brother, that the woman, the
widow, was supposed to then come in the presence of the elders,
take his shoe off of his foot, and spit in his face. Because,
and she should answer, so shall it be done to that man that will
not build up his brother's house. So this was another way God shows
that by spitting it was a sign of shame that was due to that
person because they would not do what God said was right. This was a sign of a curse being
upon them. And then in Job chapter 30, Job said, they that abhor
me flee far from me, and they spare not to spit in my face.
And what he was talking about is that there were those, before
Job had been afflicted by the Lord, that Job said, I would
not have even put their fathers over the dogs of my flock. They
were that kind of people. And yet their children now were
spitting continuously in his face. And so they hated him. They hated Job. And it wasn't
for nothing that he did. The Lord was afflicting him.
Now all of this helps us to understand the significance here in John
chapter 9. What Jesus did when he spit on
the dust and took that spittle in that dust and mixed them together
to make clay and anointed the eyes of this blind man. You see,
the Lord Jesus Christ, in order for our salvation, in order to
give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, clearly,
without shadows, to know God, The only way that could happen
is if He Himself came and in our nature was cursed by God
with our sins. If He bore our sins in His own
body up to the tree, and then He could send His Spirit, and
by His Spirit He could give us sight, to see what He had done
for us and know that all of our salvation was accomplished in
His humiliation, willingly taking our sin and bearing it too, and
God's hand of curse and smiting coming upon Him that we deserve
that we might be raised to life and given the Spirit of God to
know God and to see our salvation in Him. So by the will of God
the Father, he gave this work to Christ to finish, and the
work of Christ God gave him to finish for our salvation was
to subject himself willingly to shame and spitting. Remember Isaiah 50? He says,
I gave my back to the smiters, I gave my cheeks to those who
pluck off the hair, I did not hide my face from shame and spitting. And in Psalm 69 he says, the
reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me. Those
sinful acts and words and thoughts of these sinful people that were
brought against God have fallen, Jesus said, upon me. Because
that reproach of our sins was laid on Christ, and that's what
Christ had to suffer. And then the Lord Jesus Christ,
when he made that clay from the dust that he spit into, He applied
it. He anointed the eyes of the blind
man with it. And this is showing us that when
God is going to open our eyes, He always takes the things of
Christ and Him crucified, and by the Spirit of God anoints
us with the Spirit to see Christ for us, have Him being crucified,
and God receiving us for His sake, bearing all of our sins,
and with His stripes, we are healed, you see. So then we see
this fulfilled in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2, where he says, Looking
with our eyes, now we've been given sight. Looking. This sight
we have is not physical sight. It's the eyes of our heart. It's
the eyes of faith. He says, looking unto Jesus.
the author and finisher of faith, our faith, who for the joy that
was set before him did what? Endured the cross, despising
the shame, and is set down on the right hand of the throne
of God. So in this act, Christ is teaching that the gospel is
what he did, the work of God, finished that work during the
daytime of his life on earth, and he is himself the light of
God in this. God makes himself known in this,
and this is applied by the Spirit of God to our blind, spiritually
blind eyes. God gives us faith to see and
look to Christ, who despised the shame and is set down. He
is victorious. He finished the work. And so
he says here in John chapter 9, he goes on, he says, when
he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, made clay of the
spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
and he said to him, in verse 7, go, wash in the pool of Siloam,
which is by interpretation, scent. He went his way, therefore, and
washed, and came seeing." So the blind man has got the clay
on his eyes. Jesus said, now you go to the
pool called Scent. And when you go to the pool called
Scent, which is called Siloam here, then you wash in that pool,
and when you wash, when he washed, he came seeing. So you see here,
again, the Lord is underscoring the work of our salvation, the
healing of our spiritually blind eyes. He plastered his eyes,
he anointed his eyes with a clay, which signified his saving work,
bearing our sins and the reproach of our sins by the will of God
to finish the work of God for our salvation and to give us
the light. But that light was not given
until when? He, in that pool called scent,
washed his eyes." Now, again, what does this signify? Well,
remember, in Titus chapter 3, he says, not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by
the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.
The pool is called scent, because Christ is the one scent, and
the Spirit of God When we are given by Christ this plaster
anointing of His work, His saving work in our salvation, His substitutionary
work for us, bearing our sins and our shame before God, then
the Spirit of God then renews us With that before our eyes,
He renews us, and that washing and regeneration by the Spirit
of God enables us, by faith, to see that Christ is everything
for us. And so that the work of the Spirit
of God is to point us to Christ, the one sent, the one who was
sent in order to accomplish our salvation. And this is the way
God heals spiritually blind people born in their sins. And this
is the work of God and this is his glory in our salvation. Do
you see this? So then we go on in this account
here. It says in verse 8, the neighbors
therefore, they which before had seen him, that he was blind,
said, is not this he that sat and begged? Now here's a man
who begged because he couldn't work, he was blind. And so all
he could get was what people gave to him. He was a beggar
and blind. Absolutely worthless. He could
contribute nothing of any value to society. He was just a sponge,
a dependent only. Someone who had to be given everything
like a welfare recipient. Some said, well, this is he. Others said, he's like him. But
he said, I am he. Therefore they said to him, how
were your eyes opened? Now notice how this man gives
the account. He answered and said, a man that
is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes. There's the
word anointed. We understand that to be a reference
to the Spirit of God. Now don't we? Applying the things
of Christ to us. And said unto me, go wash in
the pool of Siloam. and wash, and wash, and I went,
and washed, and I received my sight." What is he doing here?
He's telling how God gave him sight. And what does he say?
There was nothing that he contributed to this. He simply was given
this application, this anointing on his eyes, that clay, and he
was sent to the pool, called sent, to look to Christ, by the
Spirit of God, to see Him, And His salvation in Him. And so,
given that grace of the Spirit of God, now He sees. And He just
simply tells what Christ has done. You see, when we've been
given sight, we can only tell about Christ. About Him and Him
crucified. And that's as far as it needs
to go. Because that's everything, isn't it? He doesn't make anything
of himself. He says, I'm blind. I was a beggar,
and the Lord did this to me. They said to him, where is he? He said, I know not. And they
brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind, and
it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his
eyes. Not an insignificant piece of information. The Sabbath day. Now the Pharisees said, it doesn't
matter what he did, because he didn't keep the Sabbath as they
understood it, therefore he must be a sinner. That's what they
surmised. We keep the Sabbath, he doesn't.
We follow Moses, he obviously doesn't, because he doesn't keep
the Sabbath. He did some work on the Sabbath. He opened the
eyes of a person born blind. Can you believe it? This is what
you call self-righteous blindness. They overlook the fact that a
miracle had been performed on someone who had never happened
before, since the foundation of the world. He must be sent
of God. And they bypass all of that truth,
that mountain of truth, in order to take, they think, to point
out the fact that he was a sinner. What they don't understand is
that this is the fulfillment of the Sabbath. They thought
they were keeping the Sabbath by what they did or avoided doing,
by resting, not doing any work. But in fact, they were breaking
the Sabbath because they counted what they did to be their righteousness
and the Sabbath requires us to abandon all that we're doing
and to find God's work alone to be the reason for our salvation.
You see, Sabbath means rest. And at first is seen in Genesis
when God completed the work of creation. And on the seventh
day, he ceased his work because it was all done. He didn't get
tired. God never gets tired. But because
the work was complete and perfect, the work of creation, then he
stopped working. And then he tells us, because
the Lord did that on the seventh day, you don't do any work. Now,
there was another reason. He says those who were brought
out of Egypt, because they were slaves and God redeemed them,
remember that and don't do any work. Just like in creation,
so also in redemption. The emphasis is on not our work,
but God's work. And so in Hebrews chapter 4,
he says God made a promise. Even after the children of Israel
came into the land of promise, which was called the land of
rest, he says, there's a day coming when they shall enter
into my rest. And in Hebrews chapter 4, if
you were to read that, you would find out that God had promised
Israel to enter into Canaan, and it was called a land of rest,
or a land called the Sabbath. But they couldn't bring themselves
in. Joshua alone brought them in by the conflict, his victory
over the inhabitants, and it was a land given to them by God
so that they didn't have to work. The food just grew up by itself.
and it was a land of plenty, and it was all by the accomplishments
of Joshua as their captain. So God is teaching us through
all these things, the creation rest, the deliverance from Egypt,
and the land of Canaan, that this land of rest This cessation
of work on the seventh day, all of it is pointing to the fact
that the Lord Jesus Christ, by himself, would do all the work
of our salvation, and in looking to him, believing him, we enter
into the very rest of no more laboring to produce what we can
never do, which is to find approval and acceptance with God in His
presence, to be counted among those who have no sin. That can't
happen by our work. Christ alone has to do that.
And when we believe Him, we then enter into that rest. So here,
in opening the eyes of the blind man, the Lord Jesus Christ is
doing all the work. First, we see the significance
of his death and resurrection in applying the clay that he
spit upon to the blind man's eyes, and then sending him to
the pool called scent, the Holy Spirit taking the things of Christ
and applying them to him so he sees Christ, the light of the
world, who did the work of God, and that work that he now sees
in his Savior is his own rest. And this is the rest of God promised
to his people. And the Pharisees cannot think
of anything more contemptible than that salvation would be
by the work of Christ, you see. But this is what his people believe. This is what we see. This is
God's light to us. And this is all that we delight
in. I don't know where he is, but I know he opened my eyes.
And so we see this, that Jesus said at the end of this chapter,
and I'll close with this, if you were blind, you should have
no sin. But now you say, we see, therefore
your sin remains. Do we see? If we don't see, what
are we going to do? We're going to admit that we're
blind. I can't see spiritually. Lord, open my eyes. Make me to see the Lord Jesus
Christ and save me by your grace. Save me by his work. Cause me
to look to him and nothing to myself. And show no reluctance
to come into the very presence of God because it's all by the
blood of Jesus. And with a heart of thanksgiving,
a heart of love then, going about and doing all that I do by faith,
careful to do what is according to God's will, but never taking
any credit for it as any merit of mine, but seeing it's all
done by the Lord who opened my eyes. The very Son of God, God
sent him into the world. The Lord of glory is the one
who bore my sins and my reproach in order to open my eyes to God's
glory in the work of my salvation. He overlooked my sin because
he laid it on Christ and he exalted his work in my salvation. This
was the purpose. why God allowed sin to come into
the world. What a magnificent salvation. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for
the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, the Son of God, your own Son,
your only begotten Son, and by Him we have been made the children
of God. By His work, amazing grace, Lord,
help us to not lose the the sense of awe as we consider how far
we were from God and how far the Lord Jesus came to save us
from all that we were, help us to realize that nothing in ourselves
can ever be considered as the reason for our salvation, and
even our sin is not to be considered by us as a barrier. But by looking
to the Lord Jesus Christ, we see everything God has required
of us in Him, in His death, in His substitutionary death, a
death of love, suffering in shame, bearing our sins in order to
save us from our sins, and now sending His Spirit through the
Gospel applied to our eyes of what He did, that we might glorify
God in this salvation. And truly, we pray that the Lord
Jesus Christ would be glorified for what He's done for us. Lord,
give us this sight. Don't leave us to pretend that
we have what we cannot produce, but ever come to the Lord Jesus
Christ, looking to Jesus, the author and the finisher of our
faith and our eternal rest, who did all the work in our salvation
by himself, to the glory of God. In his name we pray. Amen.